Chapter 1, The Great Gatsby Summary

Narrator Nick Carraway begins his story with commentary on how, in his youth, he came to "reserve all judgments" on people, giving himself time to form accurate, more detailed impressions of them. He then states that "when he came back from the East" his perceptions had changed, that he wanted everyone to be "in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever", but adds that only Gatsby was exempt from this belief. Nick then describes how he left the Midwest, where his family was socially prominent, to the East to pursue a career in finance, and how he found a small bungalow on Long Island next to an expansive mansion to rent. Finally, he describes being invited to the home (on the opposite side of the Island) of his distant cousin Daisy and her husband Tom, a former college football...